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Old 01-16-2006, 07:23 AM   #5
The Squatter of Amon Rûdh
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Pipe Musings

The lack of a home internet connection is definitely limiting my comments on such subjects, but hopefully I can give you all some food for thought nonetheless.

What I find interesting is just how many of Tolkien's gnomics are recycled from English literature. For example, "third time pays for all" is Tolkien's translation of a proverb from passus III of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Quote:
For I haf fraysted þe twys, and faythful I fynde þe.
Now "þrid tyme þrowe best" þenk on þe morne,
Make we mery quyl we may and mynne vpon joye,
For þe lur may mon lach when-so mon lykez.'

Sir Bertilak to Sir Gawain, p. 47 in the text linked to above.
The connection between Bilbo's riddle game and the Exeter Book riddles (the only extant Old English riddle collection) is well known, but in general Tolkien's use of sententious and gnomic statements, riddles and mnemonic rhymes echoes a common idea that our earliest literature is fossilised oral tradition. That the truth is far more complicated does not change the fact that Old English and Old Norse literature are replete with proverbial wisdom, of which my signature is an example. The poetic 'kenning', or condensed metaphor so often used by poets in the medieval Germanic languages, such as 'Whale-road' and 'swan-way' for the sea, is itself a meta-riddle, describing allusively a common concept. Medieval skalds took this to such extremes of complexity that some of their poetry still defies attempts to interpret it, seeming to revel in layer upon layer of mythological allusion and obfuscated meaning. It would be interesting to look at Bilbo and Gollum's game and see how the Anglo-Saxon riddles are apportioned between them, and whether Tolkien put in any subtle allusions to Gollum's age.

Now, the point to all this is that the medieval proverbs, like those Tolkien uses, can be mere truisms ('winter is coldest', for example), aphorisms, or truly pithy wisdom. Nor does this form of transmission reside only in dusty manuscripts, but is in common use. I think that Tolkien simply used an idea that seemed obvious to him: people use proverbs and rhymes to record the things they feel they ought to know. His reconstruction of a largely oral society accords quite well with the thinking of his time, which tended to see much oral-formulaic transmission in the earliest medieval texts. He was also quite right to give the rustic Hobbits their own set of bucolic gnomics, closely derived from common English sayings. The wisdom of some of these seems to reinforce another of Tolkien's pet points: old wives' tales may not be so valueless as many think.
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Last edited by The Squatter of Amon Rûdh; 01-16-2006 at 10:24 AM. Reason: Edited to remove blatant misinformation
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